Building A Table
by colorguard28
Summary: Crime is slow, the team is bored and McGee's finishing up a project for Habitat that Abby's talked him into. What happens when Gibbs takes an interest in the project?


_**AN:** __I drafted this short for the NFA Hobbies challenge and never got around to posting it. I dug it out today and decided it was a fun little snippet, so I figured I'd share. Credit to Sandbar17 for the Twitter discussion that led to this. As I'm moving heavily into the revision stage on my novel, I'm trying to balance it with some writing, so you might be seeing more from me in the next several weeks. Including possibly another epic for an NFA challenge... No, not Breathe. Gen, actually, with a heavy dose of creepy. The type of story that gives me nightmares if I read it. _

_Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money off of them. Just having a little fun. _

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><p><strong>Building a Table<strong>

Gibbs sipped his coffee, frowning at the lukewarm temperature. He could deal with it on a case when tepid coffee was better than none, but crime seemed to be on vacation this week. Another day of this and he'd be almost caught up with the perpetual backlog of paperwork Vance's assistant kept nagging him to finish.

The rest of the team was working on cold cases, but they were chattering enough that he knew there was some boredom mixed in.

"Hey, guys!" Abby clomped into the bullpen. "Tony, what did you do, scare off all the bad guys?"

McGee snorted. "Ziva, maybe. Tony would just talk them to death."

"Hey!"

Gibbs suppressed a snicker at the affront in the senior agent's voice.

"Tony can be intimidating," Ziva said. "But Abby is right. We have not had many cases at all this week."

Gibbs looked up. "You're bored? DiNozzo, David, go spar."

"How come McGeek isn't going?"

Gibbs smirked. "Did you hear somebody suggest McGee was the most deadly person on the team? Go. No blood. Need you both in one piece." He turned to McGee. "You're facing the winner tomorrow morning. Sparring session, first thing. I'll train with the loser."

McGee paled. "Yes, Boss."

Tony grinned. "You're going down for that crack, McFootInMouth."

"Only if you do not go down first." Ziva challenged him with a stare.

Gibbs just glared at them until they left.

McGee winced. "Abs, if one of them kills me, make sure Karen gets everything."

"Timmy, does that mean you had a chance to finish the project for Habitat?" Abby sat on the edge of McGee's desk.

"Almost done," he replied. "I spent all last night building tables. I just need to put the finishing touches on tonight."

Gibbs looked up. "What kind of finishing touches, McGee?"

"Boss?" McGee looked over at him.

"What kind of finishing touches?" Gibbs leaned back in his chair, ready for a break.

"Oh, just the usual." McGee paused. "I have to make sure the colors look right, make sure everything works. I don't want to turn it over if a section is broken."

Gibbs nodded. "How long have you been working on them?"

McGee looked at Abby. "A couple of months?"

She nodded. "About that. I thought you weren't going to have it done until next week."

"We actually had a sane schedule this week, so I figured I'd better finish while I could. Otherwise I'd end up rushing at the end and it wouldn't come out right."

"Ooh, no, that would be bad." Abby grimaced. "I helped them out last time they did this and had to rush at the end — I had bugs all over the place."

"Termites?" Gibbs grimaced. "That can ruin a project."

McGee stared at him. "Um, no, Boss. Bugs are glitches in programming code."

"Why are you programming a table? It's not one of those Jetson-type tables that sets and cleans itself up or anything?"

Abby started giggling, but McGee just looked confused. "Why would-"

"Not that kind of table, Bossman." Abby shook her head. "McGee is rebuilding the website for Habitat — my friend Karen was talking about some changes they wanted to make, but nobody really had the skills to do it, and they didn't have the money to pay a company."

Gibbs looked at Abby, then McGee.

"Boss, a table is like a chart on the site." McGee typed a few keys, then sent something to the plasma. "See the ranking chart on the Navy website? That's a table. You set the size, then you start tweaking the color, cell padding..."

"A padded cell sounds about right." Gibbs rolled his eyes.

Abby laughed even harder, until she fell off the desk into McGee's lap. He tried to keep her from hitting the floor, leaning forward to pull her back, and the chair shot out behind him, hitting the file cabinet and bouncing back, knocking them both onto the floor.

"Gibbs, there a problem here?" Vance stood on the landing above the bullpen.

Gibbs shook his head.

Vance lifted an eyebrow, then turned and headed upstairs. Gibbs walked over and offered a hand to each of them, pulling them to their feet.

"Sorry, Bossman. Sorry, Timmy." Giggles still slipped between Abby's words. "OK, I'm going back to the lab. I've caused enough trouble for one day."

McGee muttered something, but Gibbs decided he didn't want to know.

"I'm getting coffee." He turned and left the bullpen. McGee could do whatever he wanted in his free time. He was sticking to simple things, like building a boat. Things that made sense.


End file.
